In Five Years

by Rebecca Serle

I think you need a certain looseness, a certain fluidity, to speak another language. To take all the words in your brain and turn them over, one by one, like stones—and find something else scrolled on the underside.

The house is decorated in part like an old farmhouse and in part like a college girl’s first shabby-chic apartment.

There’s something about being the first one awake that feels precious, rare. I feel accomplished before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee. The whole day is better.

But then, when I hear him speak, it’s the purest, most obvious resonance of joy.